Kim Norton is the Mayor of Rochester, Minnesota, and Lourdes Aceves is the Health and Wellness Director at the National League of Cities. Across our nation, deep health disparities persist, rooted in the social, economic and environmental conditions that shape the lives of our communities. The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare these stark inequities, with communities of color bearing the disproportionate burden of the crisis. As we work to rebuild and recover, we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform the systems and structures that have perpetuated these disparities for far too lo ..read more

If you have a son, daughter, or friend at the University of Minnesota Medical School, you know graduation is coming on Friday. It is a time to celebrate and reflect. A lot has happened in the last year or two. The Star Tribune Editorial Board penned compelling pieces advocating for government funding to the medical school, including paying for a much-needed new hospital to the tune of about $1 billion. The medical school’s ambitious Dean Jakub Tolar wrote an op-ed describing concrete and intangible benefits the M Health partnership provides to Fairview (which gives a 1% annual expenditure back ..read more

The second-wave feminism of the 1960s and 70s laid the groundwork for the landmark decision of Roe v. Wade. First, married women were given the right to contraceptives under their right to privacy in 1965, followed by unmarried women in 1972. In 1970, a young and impoverished Norma McCorvey (Jane Roe, as she would be referred to in the following court proceedings) sought an abortion in her home state of Texas and had already had two previous pregnancies in which she had given the children up for adoption, unable to provide for them. Her situation was not unique, many women who couldn’t afford ..read more

In January of this year, I opened my phone to see the news that “Our Flag Means Death” would not be receiving another season. As the show is very dear to my heart and my family, this news was devastating. There was so much comfort and meaningful representation to find in the show, from its multiple interracial queer couples, powerful women, true body positivity, and characters with disabilities who had real goals and personalities. “Our Flag Means Death” was a breath of fresh air from all the tokenized and stereotyped “inclusion” we see in most cinema and television. The pattern of shows with ..read more

Interim President Jeff Ettinger sent out a campus-wide email Thursday morning announcing the agreement to end the encampment on Northrop Mall at noon, which was erected to demand an array of asks from the University of Minnesota administration and Board of Regents. Protest encampment organizers met with University leaders for multiple talks on Wednesday. Now,  Ettinger has committed to an agreement with student protestors that will end the encampment on Northrop Mall. Because of the encampment’s closure, Ettinger said that the University will reopen closed buildings on the Northrop Mall a ..read more

I strongly support the continued funding of the Gopher Gold program at the University of Minnesota, but with a few adjustments. The major problem in this program can be affixed. As highlighted in the article “UMN collected over $1 million in unspent Gopher GOLD funds,” the Gopher Gold program has provided many essential services such as campus purchases, printing services, and transportation systems to the students, fostering efficient and convenient university lives for students, faculty and staffs. Accordingly, $10 million went into Gopher GOLD accounts in the last decade.  To ensure th ..read more

I am an 8th-grade student attending St. Johnsbury Academy Jeju, South Korea. Just like other South Korean students, I have everyday work to do, including incessant homework from school and academics. I am here to argue the article “Opinion: Get off the Couch,” which was published on April 1.  I do think exercise is important, but I believe it is not the priority when we are in our youth. I used to be someone who had endless cardiovascular endurance and enjoyed running around when I was in elementary school. As I got older, schoolwork became a priority for me, and I only exercised once a w ..read more

Now that the high-profit, revenue-raising fall and winter college sports seasons are over, at teams the University and other schools are turning their attention to next year’s crop of players from high school, newcomers to returning players entering or exiting through the ever-widening transfer portals, and those players on the rosters who have eligibility remaining. It’s not an easy task to do so and the difficulty is magnified by a transcending feature, NIL, the acronym for Name, Image and Likeness, which has greatly changed the landscape of college athletics by allowing colle ..read more

Since Oct. 7, 2023, I have seen protests across the nation showing solidarity for both Israel and Arabs, both in the West Bank and in Gaza. In recent weeks, I have seen an escalation of protests on campuses across the United States in support of Gaza and the West Bank.  This escalation includes encampments at major universities, rallies and other means of protest.  While I am pro-Israel in this conflict and am horrified by the message being spread at many of these protests, I believe many attendees of the protests are good people.  It is easy to only see the negative in this sit ..read more

As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes increasingly prevalent on college campuses across the country, members of the University of Minnesota’s English department were put to the test to distinguish students from machines. A professor, lecturer and graduate student were presented with two versions of the same paragraph-length biography of Shakespeare, one was written by AI and another by The Minnesota Daily reporter Logan Anderson. Elements of both were mixed to make it more difficult to tell them apart.  All chose correct, citing sentence structure and odd phrases as red flags that led t ..read more